countdown should start soon

Met our SS on site today. We discussed about PCI and what the process of it will be like. I managed to book in our private inspector from Final Inspect and he will be doing his inspection on the 8th March 13 (1st week March). Our PCI will then be the week after our inspector does his. This way, whatever our inspector finds can be rectified immediately and our list shall be much shorter. I asked him if the contractors were going to be installing door stoppers. He says yes, and he showed them to me. They look CHEAP! haha. Im not going to complain, I didn't pay for any upgrades for them, so maybe I'll just have to change them after handover. As long as they don't install a door stopper on my $3000 pivot door I'm happy. I also told him not to install the door stoppers to some areas, especially the porcelain tiled areas, as they would tend to just mount the stoppers to the back of the doors instead of the skirting. Looks weird IMO.  SS says that the plumber will be out next week and he will be connecting the down-pipes to the stormwater outlets. Im guessing he will also be installing the sinks and mixer taps then. If Im correct, during the slab construction, there was a pipe that was broken and left aside towards the rear of our house. It looked like a storm water pipe and it was definitely used previously. Im not sure if it had been replaced of just left in the ground 'unconnected'! Glass-splash backs and mirrors should also be going in soon. He says that people do go around to sites and steal the expensive fixtures and he wants to avoid all of that, thus he's going to install all the appliances the week just before our handover.

Carpets are expected to go in after we have our PCI inspection (2nd week March). 
Final touches including our Bolero flooring will go in (3rd week March).
4th week of March is for any other unexpected hiccups that happen on the way. We should be in the house by 1st week April if all goes well. Or even earlier if everything falls in place quickly. 

I must say that our SS is really on the ball. Im very happy that he had the void fixed up so quickly. Props to him for running with us this far. I know of people who build with PD and they have had 3-4 SS in their entire build. Im glad to say that we have one and he is I believe the best one for our job! 
Maybe I shall buy him something big when the job is over. 

We met up with the planning department of our council early on in the week to talk about our fence problem. Because our house is on a corner block, there are special council requirements regarding fencing. 9m from the intersection, fence height allowed is only 1m. 
Our house sits right next to the corner because of our extended garage, and thus, we had to 'fill' up that entire area to get the house level. Now our problem is that, the house is sitting too high above the nature strip and we can't erect a fence 3m high at the intersection..
So back to drawings and building permits. Im meeting with a draftsman tomorrow to discuss about our landscaping and fencing requirements. Council want us to submit our proposal and hopefully they'll get give us an OK.
Furthermore, we have quite a steep slope running along side the entire laundry side of the house. I had a structural engineer design a retainer wall to run along it so that the area can be levelled off. But this wall is already 1.4m. The allowed fence without council approval is 1.8m! I can't have a 400mm fence along the side.
Anyway, its something we need to work on before we get our handover.

I bought these during the week.

Beacon lighting only provided us with the step lights. I find that their prices are not very competitive at all. Infect they are quite expensive.

Up/Down Feature light for the front pillar $50ea

Thomas Edison bulbs antique X2 $17ea

Tripod Lamp 
Activity Room Upper floor
$270

Feature Sky**r Floor Lamp
160cm H x 25cm W x 25cm D
Living Hall ground floor / Or under Stairs
$295
[d]co concepts

I went back to the showroom in Harcrest where we first saw the Sandringham 45 and fell in love with it. I was there to look at how their constructed the railings at the void and also just looking at the finishing of the workmanship for the display home, so that I can compare it to my own when we go through to do our PCI. Walking through the house makes me even more excited that ours will be ready so soon!

Im not sure if our balcony would have tiles on the facade like the ones in the display home. We didn't choose a tile facade for our horizontal portion of the balcony, its just cladding. It was too expensive for tiles. $12,000 expensive.

Tiles on the balcony horizontal facade

Nice deck, probably would be something we'll do too

Mixer tap on the wall. Looks weird to me.

Some work completed so far include: 

Front door/balcony door stained

Locks/bolts for internal doors delivered

Completed electrical, include switchbox

Painted horizontal lining boards on facade - could possibly be wrong colour used

Painted external of laundry door 

Painted meterbox - could possibly be wrong colour used.

Our Stained Pivot Door. Looking good ;)

Electrical Switchboard

I didn't actually realise that we will be getting a switchboard IN the garage. I've always been in a traditional house and the switchboard will be in the meterbox OUTSIDE of the house. This box in the garage will make it so much more bearable to get to during the winter when power outages/trips are so common.

Our extended garage. Painted 'around' switches

Close up of front facade

20th Feb 13

almost the last stretch

My apologies for not updating the blog. Im going to try to be as accurate as I can with the series of events that has occurred.

Since my last post, we had some issue with powerlines being too close to our building and we had to have protective casing installed by PD on the overhead powerlines while the Hebel walls were installed. They had an additional black screening net during the period of the installation. I believe would be for safety reasons as well. 

We also had some problems with our rendering. Remembering that the colours were starkly different from what we selected, our BC and SS confirmed that there was a base layer which will be greyish looking under the colour coat render. Im not sure if 2 layers will be sufficient, but only time will tell if crack start to appear. 

The hebel walls were installed on the 29th Nov 2012. 

Hebel Wall 29th Nov 12

Hebel Wall 29th Nov 12

Hebel Wall 29th Nov 12

Hebel Wall 29th Nov 12

Hebel Wall 29th Nov 12

Insulation installed 30 Nov 12. Immediately after Hebel wall has been completed. The guys only used 1 day to do their insulation installation. However, they've still left some bags in the roof space. Not completed. SS says that they'll come back later after electricals to finish off the ceiling insulation.

PD didn't let us know that there was an option to have internal walls insulation for sound reasons. I do believe the sandringham 45 would benefit to have sound insulations in the void area as sound can travel up from the kitchen and family area. 

Surprisingly on the 1st and 2nd of December 2012, there had been some plasters at the site plastering our walls! They started their work on the ground level first. Then finished the rest of the house the next day. TWO whole days and plastering is DONE. I bet they had been waiting to do their job but due to our side of our house not Hebel-ed in time, plastering had been pushed back.

Plastering

Poor workman ship of plasterers.
Will need to gap fill later

3rd December 12. Facade cladding installed. It seems like our SS is really pushing it to have this house completed as much as possible before the Christmas break! The front facade in the showrooms are a mixtures of Bluestone tiles (horizontal column) and normal ceramic tiles (vertical column). The bluestone tiles are very attractive and beautiful when you see them at the showrooms, except they are also very pricey. To be exact, $12k of an upgrade. The vertical tiles cost us $2300 to upgrade. All of this is ONTOP of the $10k facade upgrade for the Beaumaris design. 

As such we opted to have a standard cladding affixed to the horizontal portion of the facade. An Axon cladding from James Hardie. We told PD that we would like it to have a modern feel to it as well, so we requested for 400mm centres spacing cladding. 

Initially SS installed a 133mm centres spacing cladding, we had to send an email to them stating that the cladding that they have installed is incorrect! But they did get it fixed in the end.

Facade installed 

Wrong Facade Cladding

The look we are after. 400mm centres

7 December 12
Cabinets delivered!
In my earlier post, I mentioned that our BC told us that the colour we have chosen for our bathrooms Tribal Palm had run out of stock and we will need to pick a new colour for our bathrooms. We chose Espresso Ligna. Hopefully the colours that we selected will turn out well.
Very quickly the cabinets had been installed and we were able to finally be able to see what our colour selections were like for the first time!

Kitchen cabinets. 

Bathroom 1 cabinets

Paperbark island bench

Installed Kitchen Cabinets - Milano Walnut

Master Ensuite Cabinets- Espresso Ligna

Stairs have also been installed

Contemporary Option 2

Stairs will be stained walnut brown

Pivot Door

Do you think our pivot door door handles are quite high?

15 December 12

Upper floor render completed - Time Capsule Dulux

Scaffolding have come down! 

Facade fixed! 400mm centres

Garage construction begins

SS has advised me then PD will be closed during the Christmas and New years period right after our garage frame has gone up. Looks like we can be moving into our new house sometime early next year!